"This exhibit is a two-person collaboration between Brent Everett Dickinson and Wayne Adams that considers both visible and non-visible elements: Adams’ visual artifacts and Dickinson’s invisible but omnipresent voice-based sound piece (which works to organize the viewer’s experience of the visible elements, alternately supporting and unsettling the gallery experience through both responsible and irresponsible interpretive framing). It is the vacillation between supporting and unsettling, coupled with the complex meanings embedded in the work itself, which creates beautiful feedback and failure, posing as many questions as answers. Of course the final, necessary component of this division of labor is the viewer’s own engagement with these complicated transactions, adding meaning to the exhibition by the very presence of their body and mind, displacing and organizing the works as they move through the space.

"The title relates to I Corinthians 14, in which the Apostle Paul mandates the necessary context for Godly “tongues”—the inclusion of an inspired interpreter. The use of this concept provocatively draws a correlation between the coding that goes on in all art work, richly exemplified by Adams' works, and the spiritually-inspired coding represented in the biblical account of speaking in tongues. Though there are obvious categorical differences between these, in both cases crude materials (i.e. paint in the one case and, in the other, sound pushed through the larynx of a prophet) are coaxed into sublime communication through the role of interpretation."

—Bruce Herman, Gallery Director

Wayne Adams is a Brooklyn-based artist who received his B.F.A. from Calvin College and M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. Adams has exhibited throughout the Midwest, New York, and Vienna, Austria. Recent shows include, Works Off Canvas, Denny Gallery, NY (2013); The Ballot Show, Denise Bibro, NY (2012); Control Alt Delete, HKJB, Brooklyn, NY (2011); Adams | Miracle, STOREFRONT Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2010).

Brent Everett Dickinson has exhibited his multi-media work throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He earned an M.F.A. in painting from Yale University after graduating with a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He has recently produced original experimental sound pieces for the Chelsea Music Festival and the Cornerstone Music Festival, as well as sculptural/sound pieces for the Socrates Sculpture Park in NYC and the Essl Museum in Vienna, Austria.

Currently Dickinson is developing experimental drawings with the use of fruit flies and mosquitos, creating mineralized fossils in various meaningful landscapes around the country. He is also producing a video that utilizes a low-tech interface with Google Maps to travel around the world with one of Hitler’s toilets, which currently resides in an auto-service station bathroom in New Jersey.

Gordon College is one of the nation's premier Christian colleges and located just north of Boston. We offer students extraordinary access to leading-edge opportunities for intellectual, professional, and leadership development to address the increasingly complex challenges of a global society. Gordon stands apart from other outstanding institutions in New England by combining an exceptional education with an informed Christian faith.